Week Ten – The End Is Here

Week 10: Books that I would bring if the world was going to be destroyed by aliens/cylons and we had to restart civilization as we know it. (ie: the basis of human knowledge and thought and civilization.)

Ah, what a way to end this meme. (Has it really been ten weeks of this?)

So, the world is going to be destroyed, is it? By aliens or cylons or a meteor crashing into us? Well, if the earth is destroyed, I’m going to assume that we’ll be heading out to space, and if so, then there is a book I would definitely be taking with me.

Plus, I could write for it. Oh, look at that — world’s destroyed, but I can still have job security.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.

In many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern Rim of the Galaxy, the Hitchhiker’s Guide has already supplanted the great Encyclopaedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two important respects. First, it is slightly cheaper; and secondly it has the words DON’T PANIC inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover.

– Introduction

Thanks to the Guide, I’ll be well read on such subjects as the Babel fish; the dangers of Vogon poetry; the many uses of the towel; important slang; and the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything.

However, there are other books that I’ll have to pack to help in contributing to the rebuilding of civilization.

Books to Pack:

Religious
– The Holy Bible

Jubilare’s bringing Mere Christianity, so I’ll just find her when I need that.

Mythology:

– John Milton’s Paradise Lost
– C.S. Lewis’ Space Trilogy, The Chronicles of Narnia, and ‘Till We Have Faces
– Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince
– Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are

Politics:

Melpomene has this area covered, so I will not bother taking up space in my bag. However, I’m tempted to bring along The Communist Manifesto just to mix things up a bit.

Post navigation

7 thoughts on “Week Ten – The End Is Here”

I highly approve. I would bring Gray’s Anatomy if I had it, but alas! And I did not even thing about a book on pregnancy and birth. My midwife friends would be very disappointed in me! To Kill a Mockingbird and Crime and Punishment… I can only say “yes.”

With a pregnant sister, I had access to What to Expect and read it recently. It was disturbing but extremely informative, and since the human race would eventually have to get busy or die out, I figured it would be good to have a little guidance. 🙂

I actually don’t own Gray’s. Or the OED. But if the end of the world occurred, and I had time to pack a bag of books, I’d head straight for the bookstore and grab both. Plus, if the world was ending, who’d care about things like money? The only reason why I don’t own the OED is because $995 is a lot of money that I can’t allow myself to spend on a dictionary, even though I really, really want it.

(Did I just admit I’d become a looter if the society descended into chaos? Oh dear.)

Hey, if the zombie apocalypse hits, I’ll be a looter too… I’m not proud of it, but it’s true.

Oh… my “Precious” is a Funk and Wagnalls from the late 1800s, and it would be a wrench to leave it. As much as I love dictionaries, though… I would have to opt for my small student’s OED. The Funk and Wagnalls is a good half-foot thick and weighs more than my cat. My advice for procuring the dictionary of your dreams is to peruse library sales. When I found the Funk and Wagnalls at a library sale at my college, and asked how much it was, the librarians stared at me as if I was insane and told me to just take it. I think I may have giggled maniacally, my arms clasped around the book like a vise. Getting a wonderful dictionary for free is rare, I think, but getting one, used, for an affordable price is becoming easier and easier. Most people, it seems, prefer online dictionaries now.

Alas, it is human failing that we cannot overcome! 😉 Print encyclopedias and dictionaries have always been error-ridden too, though encyclopedias more than dictionaries. I’m a librarian, and part of my education was in how reference sources are formed and how they compare. The internet and print material are subject to the same failings. The important thing to do is learn how to evaluate your sources. I use online thesauri and dictionaries with the same confidence as I use my print ones, but I enjoy the print ones more. 😀

That quote has just made me think how The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (the actual Guide, not the book Douglas Adams wrote) in some ways prefigures Wikipedia. Edging out more prestigious encyclopedias, apocryphal information, a somewhat more informal attitude…hm…

I’d say you’re cheating by choosing a fictional book, but it’s too clever an answer you’ve given, so I’ll let it pass. +) Your more realistic choices are excellent too, of course. Though I wouldn’t blink at leaving Rowling behind, or even Maurice Sendak, nice as that book is, we could do very well with Crime and Punishment and To Kill a Mockingbird. Some basic science and medical books would help too — just not anything too complex, or we’ll never learn it unless we’ve a brilliant medical student or doctor among the survivors who could teach the finer points before he dies.

And I think the husbands of the apocalypse would also be glad for a book that tells them and their wives what to expect with pregnancy — if that knowledge gets lost, then pregnancy gets more terrifying than it already is!